D.I.Y. beauty: beauty on a budget (part 1)

From a very young age, I have always enjoyed reading beauty and hair magazines. This is not all too surprising seeing as I grew up in a home filled with women. My sisters and I used to order magazines from the US and devour them...at least visually as we did not yet comprehend English at all. My love for all things beauty and hair related grew exponentially from then onwards. This culminated in me joining an online hair forum in september 2006, of which I am still an active member today. Over the years, the ladies with whom I interact on that forum have taught me so much about refining my style, my beauty regimen and my hair care routine. For the past decade I've focused mainly on growing long, healthy natural hair.

And it was truly a joy. It became a ritual for me and it was very therapeutic. Every week I would take out a day and play my favourite music while taking care of my hair. It solved a long term problem to be honest. Prior to my healthy natural hair journey, I used to relax my hair and had fallen victim to a vicious cycle of growing my hair long, only to see it all break off again a few months after I had relaxed it. After I started my natural hair journey, I no longer needed to worry whenever I was invited somewhere. God always helped me to figure out a style to sport: